new dreamers
by Douglas Messerli
Damien Chazelle (screenwriter and
director), Justin Hurwitz (composer), Benj Pasek and Justin Paul
(lyrics) La La Land / 2016
In the tradition of the MGM movies
of the 1940s and even earlier works starring Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers,
director Damien Chazelle has created a wonderfully visual throwback to the
American movie musical, incorporating as well, the
candy-colored musical (even
operatic) fairy-tales of French director Jacques Demy, particularly (in plot
terms) Demy’s The Umbrellas of Cherbourg and
(in musical inspiration) that director’s The
Girls of Roquefort. Since I am a musical addict, I knew I’d love this film
the first moment I read about it. I did.
But La
La Land is something quite original and special because it is also a paean
to Los Angeles’ sites, landscape, and light along with lauding the seemingly
eternal attraction of this great metropolitan area for dreamers of every kind.
The two young dreamers in this case are
Sebastian Wilder (Ryan Gosling) and Mia Dolan (Emma Stone) who couldn’t be more
different from another. Mia, from a small town in Nevada, is in awe of theater
and film, and wants to become—what else?—an actress, suffering the ignominies
of auditions where casting directors and producers interrupt with cell-phone
conversations and a brief dismissal; a call-back can be even worse, puffing up
one’s hopes only to have them come crashing down again after a second brush-off.
Sebastian is far more crusty and able to
ward off public criticism, but is even more pitiable in some senses since he is
a jazz purist, determined to keep the dying art alive single-handedly. His
dream is to open a true jazz club in a city that basically has little interest
in such an art, which lands him in continued financial crises, which his loving
sister, Laura (Rosemarie DeWitt) mocks.
The two central actors, like Astaire
and Rodgers in Top Hat begin a
relationship not out of attraction but dismissal, Sebastien and Mia on the
freeway, instead of a park, he honking and speeding around her car where she is
desperately attempting to learn lines for an audition, salutes him with a
finger. Indeed, the entire musical scene ("Another Day of Sun") is a
kind of group audition, as suddenly dozens of young people trapped on the
freeway, leave their automobiles to sing and dance. The long, uncut scene is a
kind of wonder, if a bit frenetic and a display of the virtuosity of its own
choreographic achievements. But if recognized as simply a kind of amazing
overture, the utter outrageousness of its achievement makes perfect sense.
Later, like all musical heroes and
heroines, the couple meets up again at a restaurant where Sebastian has been
hired to play only Christmas songs. After playing the standards, he dares to
take a single jazz break, playing the movie’s theme song (“Mia’s and
Sebastian’s Theme”) which lures in the passing Mia, who is delighted by the
music which gets Sebastian fired, he refusing to even hear of her passing
appreciation.
They meet again at a Hollywood-like party, where he is now playing as
keyboardist for a 1980’s-style pop-up band. This time Mia gets a bit of revenge
when she asks the group to play the insufferable “I Ran (So Far Away),” after
which she makes up a bit by asking him to walk her to her car, driving away,
only to later sing their own version of the Astaire/Rogers duo, “Isn’t This a
Lovely Day (To Be Caught in the Rain”) and from Fancy Free, “Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off,” this version devoted
to the beautiful hues of the evening sky, “A Lovely Night.”
Despite their mockery of one another,
it is clear to both that they are perfect for each other, and since Mia is just
been called back for an audition for a movie that bears some resemblance to Rebel without a Cause, Sebastian invites
her to a local movie theater which is showing that film as a revival.
However, she has forgotten that she
made an appointment with her current, perfectly sweet boyfriend, Greg Earnest
(Finn Wittrock), whose brother has just come to town, and cannot find a way out
of that date. Greg and his brother are truly well-groomed and wealthy business
men, talking about the best restaurants throughout the world and trashing the
dirty movie theaters such as the one in which Mia had just agreed to spend the
night with Sebastian; in anger and frustration, she rushes from the dinner in
the expensive restaurant Jar, barely making the movie appointment with
Sebastian.
Yet at the very point where Sal Mineo and James Dean attend a lecture at
the Griffith Observatory, the projector jams and the frame is burned. She and
Sebastian escape the movie theater as well, deciding to attend the real
Observatory, wherein they float above the stars in “Planetarium,” a truly
lovely and imaginative piece.
By this time the audience and the characters know they are in love, and,
at Sebastian’s suggestion Mia begins to write her own one-woman show while he
takes a gig with an old friend, Keith (John Legend), who needs a
pianist/keyboardist to bring in some money. The group is a great success, and
Sebastian is finally able to make enough to actually open his own club; but
when Mia hears the music she cannot even comprehend his “sell out” to Keith’s
pop-music sound. Her own one-woman show is a flop, with only a few individuals
attending, she overhearing some of them discussing the amateurism of the show.
When Sebastian surprises her, returning for a single night from his
ongoing band tour, she and he fight, Mia being unable to understand his now
seemingly permanent commitment to a kind of music he formerly disdained and his
insensitivity to her own theater failure. These discussions are some of the
very most poignant in the otherwise quite lightweight film, and the acting
abilities of Gosling and Stone become quite apparent.
Mia determines to return to her family
home in Nevada, having been hurt one too many times, and Sebastian presumably
returns to his touring, while trying to assimilate Mia’s criticisms, which
eventually do change him.
A phone call he receives reveals that an
agent, having actually seen and liked Mia’s performance, wants her to audition
for a movie to be shot in Paris; Sebastian, tracking Mia down, drives to Nevada
to tell her the news, but she is less than appreciative, being now convinced
that she has no real talent.
Challenging her—just as she has him, to
live up to her dreams—he returns with her to La La Land the next morning,
reassuring her, somewhat beyond reason, that she will get the part. She does
indeed nail the role, even though there is not yet any script. We never see any
of her movie. But her trip to Paris, we know, will mean the end of their
relationship, just as he had ended the intensity of their relationship with his
touring with the pop-group.
Five years later, she is a Hollywood
star, and returns home to her husband and child—not Sebastian. They are
attending a friend’s performance, but suffering the same kind of traffic jam
we’ve seen during the first scene, she suggests to her husband that he pull off
and go to a local neighborhood restaurant instead. On their way back to the car
they encounter the sound of jazz from a new local club. He, evidently an
aficionado himself, suggests they try it out. Mia immediately perceives its
name “Seb’s,” with a piano note between the b and s, as her design for the club
Sebastian once insisted needed to be called “Chick and Sticks,” representing
the real roots of jazz.
The club is crowded and the first set has been a popular one with the
attendees. When Sebastian enters, now as emcee, returning to the piano for a
short number, he spots Mia in the audience, and quietly and slowly replays the
“Mia and Sebastian Theme.” During that lovely performance, Chazelle suddenly
intrudes with a fantasy, obviously shared by both Mia and Sebastian,
representing what might have been different: what if he had not ignored her
original appreciation of his art, what if he had gone with her to Paris, what
if….? It is a nearly endless fantasy that doesn’t really need to be. Like
Geneviève and Guy in The Umbrellas of
Cherbourg, there is little doubt that their re-encounter is a deeply
painful one, but also filled with understanding and good wishes for each of
their futures.
I didn’t mind Chazelle’s imaginative presentation of what might have
been, but it is somehow intrusive and represents the American need for
overstatement. The gentle smiles on the faces of Sebastian and Mia, after,
leaving with her husband, she turns back to Sebastian, say far more than the
musical interlude, and makes this self-conscious musical far more significant
than it might otherwise have been.
Yet one can only admire Chazelle for staying so true to his original
vision. After he and composer Justin Hurwitz had written the work, having found
early would-be producers, they were told they would have to abandon the first
“audition” scene, would have to remake Sebastian into a rock musician, and
definitely would have to abandon their melancholy ending. What might have
resulted if these imaginative believers had truly given up their dreams to
those Hollywood hacks would quite obviously been an empty film which surely
would not have delighted the Sundance audiences and helped the filmmakers and
actors to achieve major award status. Thank heaven the true believers actually
do keep coming every day to Los Angeles—despite how difficult those dreams are
to be realized.
Los Angeles, December 14, 2016
Reprinted
from World
Cinema Review (December
2016).
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